


a prelude to a lifetime

by fimbulvetr



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 07:31:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17240072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fimbulvetr/pseuds/fimbulvetr
Summary: Tasuku can’t hear him above the sound of his heart but his lips form the shape of two familiar words that he hates: “I’m sorry.”





	a prelude to a lifetime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chlorobenzene](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorobenzene/gifts).



> FOR VEE!! a late and shameless sense8 au about tabasco tasuku's feelings. sorry for the flagrant disregard for both canons' logic...
> 
> this is, technically, m/m, because tasuku is in it, but there are no kissies. also it has vomit. sorry!

It’s the evening of Tasuku’s 24th birthday and he’s standing on a stage where he doesn’t belong.

The headache hits just as he opens his mouth to deliver the climactic line. It’s the worst he’s ever had, like a chasm splitting his skull in two. The piercing stare of Kamikizaka Reni bores through him. He stumbles through the line but everything’s muffled, as if he’s underwater and his own voice is above the surface.

The headache pulses and the stage lights are suddenly too bright, too hot. He feels ill. The protein shake he had for lunch seems to lurch in his stomach, and as if in a dream he hears himself say, “Excuse me,” and he’s running backstage, GOD-za be damned. It’s just a dress rehearsal. The real event isn’t until next week. It’s _just_ a dress rehearsal.

He vomits. Twice. His mouth tastes of bile and protein shake and inexplicably, marshmallows. The scent of women’s perfume hovers around him, floating above the stench of vomit, a piercing floral haze with no discernible origin. As he gets to his feet and hits flush on the toilet his vision blurs and instead of a bathroom wall he sees, just for an instant, a field of flowers.

A sharp rap of knuckles against the cubicle door snaps him back to reality.

“Are you _done?_ ”

Haruto’s voice is very annoyed and just ever-so-slightly concerned. Tasuku wipes off his mouth on the costume’s sleeve with what could be considered reckless abandon, then pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to ignore the pressure still mounting in his head. It’s better now. It’s a manageable discomfort.

“I’m coming,” he replies roughly, opening the door. Haruto sighs, striding out without another word, and Tasuku follows suit. As he moves, his muddled brain thinks it sees someone else in the mirror, someone with blue-green eyes and a worried expression. But he doesn’t, because that’s ridiculous.

He goes back out, makes his apologies, finishes practice, and once he’s back in his own clothes, calls his brother to confirm their plans. They’d already agreed weeks in advance that they would go out for drinks for his birthday. For the first time in 24 years, Tasuku couldn’t stand the idea of celebrating at home. Even if Fuyuki knew exactly why that was the case, he was bound by brotherly rules to humour him, which made him ideal company.

Tasuku picks up some painkillers and bottled water on the way, and drinks until the headache is gone for good.

 

The next morning Tasuku wakes up in what is not his own bed. He knows this because there’s another man laying on the silk sheets (which he doesn’t own), watching him with a soft smile, part confused, part amused, all unfamiliar. He has long silver hair that spills over his bare shoulder. There’s an empty space in the bed where someone else had been, a slight indent in the pillow beside him. He can smell the perfume again.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” says the man, and Tasuku scrambles to get up so quickly that he half falls out of the bed and lands—

On his own bedroom floor.

The bed is empty. The perfume lingers.

Tasuku decides it’s time for a shower and a jog.

 

The comforting thing about exercise is that it’s regimented. Tasuku knows what to expect of his routine, which is why it’s called a routine. At no point during his morning jog does he expect to lose his breath—he’s been able to control his breathing since he was old enough to walk unassisted, and jogging is just a warm-up. So it’s even more discomfiting when it hits him.

It’s the dizziness that stops him first; the airlessness, weakness in his knees. When tries to stop his heart from racing it beats faster and faster until he’s hyperventilating, bracing his arms against a tree. Later he’ll learn this is called a panic attack. Right now, though, he tries to steady himself, to ride it out until he remembers how breathing works.

When he looks up, he sees Tsumugi staring back at him, as if in a warped reflection. There’s a food court between them (where before was only grass), and Tasuku can _smell_ the food, feel the air conditioning on his skin, hear the pop music playing beneath the chatter of crowds.

Tsumugi is gaunt and pale, eyes glassy and wide. Tasuku can’t hear him above the sound of his heart but his lips form the shape of two familiar words that he hates: “I’m sorry.”

He takes another wretched breath and finds himself alone again. Then he catches his breath and resumes his jog. Routines are made to be kept. There’s at least some certainty in that.

 

He’s so exhausted that night he falls straight to sleep, into a blessedly dreamless slumber. Nothing out of the ordinary happens the next day, or the day after that.

 

“Hmm, no, this won’t do at all,” says the man in his living room.

This man has the most ridiculous hairstyle that Tasuku has ever seen; an asymmetrical avant-garde situation that might belong in a fashion magazine or something. Tasuku doesn’t read fashion magazines, though, so mostly he just looks _bizarre_.

“What are you doing in my apartment,” he asks. He stays calm, not raising his voice. Home invasions aren’t common in his neighbourhood, but he’s prepared. He can take the average adult man in an unarmed fight in most situations, and though he wouldn’t call this person _average_ , he’s at least confident that he poses no real danger to him.

“Your apartment?” The man turns to him fully, frowning. “You _live_ here?”

“This is my living room—”

The man raises a finger— ‘one moment’—and takes a drink of tea from a delicate European-style teacup with a curly handle. That’s when Tasuku notices he’s holding a saucer.

“There’s a lack of… personality to this room. I’m sorry to say there’s not an ounce of inspiration to be found in here.”

“Why are you here?” Tasuku’s patience is wearing thin. If the strange man notices, he doesn’t acknowledge it, and instead begins pacing, muttering something under his breath. Finally, he looks up, a look of awe on his face.

“We must be dreaming,” he says, and promptly disappears.

 

Tasuku is 24 years old and having some sort of a breakdown.

He leaves GOD-za in an anti-climactic scene. In his head he’d imagined explosions, fire. In reality it’s a few terse words and Kamikizaka’s sharp little eyes staring into his own, a hollow “Good luck to you,” and a stiff handshake. He feels several pairs of eyes watching him as he leaves the theatre for good, carrying nothing but a stack of his scripts in a cardboard box.

“It’s right to walk away,” says a soft voice from the shadows. He doesn’t recognise it, and when he turns his head to look there’s no one there.

He’s having some sort of breakdown, because hadn’t this been his dream? Hadn’t he cursed Tsumugi for abandoning his own? He’d done it, in a sense. He stood at the summit of GOD-za’s stage, the top actor, showered with praise and adoration, poured his heart and soul into every script and every performance and at the height of it all, felt absolutely nothing.

 

When he gets home he puts the cardboard box down next to his bed and pulls out the very first script—his audition piece. It’s annotated and dog-eared and there are scribbles in the margins of every page. Most of the handwriting is his own. Some of it isn’t.

He sits on the floor and reads by lamplight, mouthing the lines, and when he runs out of lines he reads the notes aloud.

“This is the heart of the piece!” It’s Tsumugi’s voice, Tsumugi’s handwriting, Tsumugi’s squiggled line of highlighter beneath the pivotal line that they’d argued for hours over.

Tasuku keeps reading, never raising his head, never daring to. Before he reaches the end, he begins to doze off. He feels the warmth of a hand on his cheek, hesitant and soothing, and instinctively he raises his own to cover it.

“I’m sorry,” Tsumugi whispers, and Tasuku’s too tired to say it back.

 

Weeks later, when Tasuku finds himself at the doors of the Mankai Theatre, it feels like he’s known the place all along. He’s seen it in his dreams, heard the laughter behind the doors, felt the warmth of the stage lights on the back of his neck. He’s yearned for it.

There are footsteps behind him when he walks through the open doors, but he doesn’t look back. He doesn’t have to.


End file.
